Aeroboi

Maybe it could serve two purposes. Function to the idea in the OP and be a Xenon collector/distiller. At a very low rate only on static groundstations (bases) when active on the vessel while having a xenon tank to store it to. Or through the atmosphere on a plane at a faster rate. Besides that you could have the scoop on any vessel you intend to aerobrake with or when leaving Kerbin. The idea being so you can collect small collections and store them at depots or other ships in the solar system.

Yes! Yes! Well, they're inline with the Kerbodyne 3.75m tanks based on the SLS so then one would have to swap the entire fuel tank setup so that's quite rare and confusing. Also, the 5M parts are the Nasa replica parts so the F1 engine mount is the basis for the engine setup. That would then have a 5m wide mammoth stick out with the outer attachment nodes being overlapped so imagine to discuss this point to predict how far off it is to say they would swap these parts to different sizes. In any way, you could always put the mammoth under the F1 adapter with the the S3-S4 5m-3.75m adapter in between and 4 other engines on the outer nodes. I'm always in for tricks and quirks Not a bad idea. So that's a (A) a different Vector and (B) a 500Kn RD-191 replica? In any case we do need the Space shuttle replica variant engine, called Vector or whatever name the Dev's willing to give. Maybe. But because a game needs to be a challenge it doens't need to be easy. Also, KSP isn't real life, and in KSP the application proves OP so I find the comparison not in relation since this is a game with a small solar system. I'm not against this. The weight of a scaled space shuttle version dictates the required thrust based on the Mk3 lineup. And admittedly, 425kN isn't bad. Since I already posted the Vector clustering on a mammoth you can greatly increase the thrust per cross section. If they're 425kN each I wouldn't mind. And in general I don't agree with you is that they should cancel surface mounting. Especially the Vector. Why? Vectors are used as Submarine ballast. Therefore it shouldn't be only stack mounted as that would disallow me proper weight balancing as I would be required to use a non-hydrodynamic and almost always buoyant attachment part. Some SSTO's of mine use the Vector in Vacuum as VTOL. Some SSTO's are big and require a lot of thrust. 1 Vector is usually okay. Otherwise I would have to swap a future lower thrust vector for 2 or more and need another attachment part just to stick them on. Beyond editing cfg files these are often KerbalX or Googledrive vessels that are to share so I wouldn't want to edit surface attachability just for my own game play. While the Vector is a high gimbal engine (and should remain as such) it's particularly good at creating torque. So if there's any engine type you want to surface mount anywhere where you'll require torque you want that engine to be surface mountable. Think about ring stations (to create spin) VTOL engines for planes and space planes. IIRC the different physic elements the Vector provides is what creates many of the unique designs out there. Also, even a 425kN Vector swap would still be the most powerful 1.25m engine (a 1.875m variant should have more thrust) and therefore the easiest engine type to pack or clip in tight spots so it would be the particular engine you'd want to mount anywhere whenever you would require thrust. My picture above clustering them on a Mammoth is ludicrous at 1000kN each, if they were 425kN I'd be okay.

Does a contraption that sinks to get a surface sample from the ocean floor count? The reason I ask is because I can make this and it means I don't have to swim. Either way, I would bring more mass to the scene or have a dedicated boat craft to get the Kerbal to the shores. In both cases I have to contrapt something heavy plus a cage so the Kerbal stays at the bottom so I'm sure this is acceptable as it requires a dedicated vessel/module. Regardless it seems immersive and creative to do it this way. Personally I would like a formula of score that gives points to re-useability. While the lifter might not be (unless you replicate stratzenblitz) you can recover almost anything else and save costs. Wouldn't you want the most varied rigs to be designed to serve as a sample for how such a mission can be constructed? What I personally don't like about challenges and why I often don't participate is because the challenge rules forbid certain specific designs. Like you must contain this but you cannot do that! I hope a new rebooted eve rocks challenge opens the possibility for all designs imaginable.

@boolybooly I'm not sure why I haven't posted this yet. But I made a very large R.A.P.I.E.R. based cargo SSTO that can haul 1.5Kiloton to orbit with volume for 12m wide, 60m long cargo and only has 368 Parts which includes the cargo itself. TBH, I assembled, resembled several typical space planes with various setups for maximum efficiency and I've worked on redesigns for months (not on end) to get it where it is. Hearts Chevron 96 Cargo Lifter for the maximalist record. MTOW: 2.79 Kiloton (default default payload takeoff weight is 2.75 Kiloton) It has a cargo payload fraction of up to 52% with proper piloting and one R.A.P.I.E.R. can carry 28.5 Ton. Because of the size/weight versus it's cross section the space plane has incredible momentum and can therefore easily break past 400m/s at MTOW and reach ~1600m/s with the highest payload capacity. It could in fact get past 400m/s in many instances using drag inducing parts. There are also 2 other versions of the space plane with 2 fairing setups in case you have something that consists out of drag. This could be a large space station, a module of that or a mothership or mothership module that isn't aerodynamic in and of itself. I have a version with 2 x 5.5m fairings and one with a single 7.5m fairing on my KerbalX. They are all more or less the same. The only difference is the cargo attachment point and the relative wing position for aerodynamic re-balance based on the fairing setup. https://kerbalx.com/Aeroboi/Hearts-Chevron-96-Cargo-Lifter-2375MC (Picture above) https://kerbalx.com/Aeroboi/Hearts-Chevron-96-Cargo-Lifter-75MC https://kerbalx.com/Aeroboi/Hearts-Chevron-96-Cargo-Lifter-25MCP

I never really role play and I'm mostly building stuff. To build stuff you test, to do so you use "cheat menu", "hyperedit" and a plethora of flight reverts, quiksaves and quikloads. If I were to play career and use revert flight in any case it would be stupid. Still I like things to work out properly and have the tendency to use this option. I don't want to make due with a dead Kerbal just because I forgot to drag a radial engines to the first stage just to see my rocket tumble into the ground just because I forgot to click a specific setting in the context menus when inside the editor. Or do all of you people build rockets out of the ground 100% functional without quirks or issues and accept every mistake you made that leads to failure? I mostly always make my rockets 100% functional from the get go, but sometimes I forget something and often that mistake is critical. It's not like a real space program would forget to light all corresponding first stage engines. While in a real space program anyone would verify and check each step is done properly. So if I were to forget putting any engine to the correct stage and I would fail my launch and kill my crew then it wouldn't be a real space program would it? Is logical, makes sense?

This example is why the Vector is Abysmal. I actually use this trick because I take usage out of this trick often but wouldn't mind to see it fixed due to being unrealistic. Below is a picture of a Mammoth engine with 4 vectors at the underside making for a total 8000Kn of thrust. With some moving the parts around I could cramp a total of 6 Vectors for a total 10.000Kn while packed inside the 3.75m rear cross section of the Mammoth engine. I would put off Gimbal on the engines so they don't gimbal through the Mammoth nozzles (gimbal on mammoth should be enough by the way for a proper functional rocket)

As @RealKerbal3x pointed out it is just another empty landscape to land upon. With another sky color and the same textured terrain. How cool is that? .... Your answer: .......................... If a new planet is a thing it should add something new that isn't in the game yet. For instance a planet very close to the Sun, like a super rocky planet or a giant. So that could be a super hot Jupiter as they call it. Why not? Now we have incentive to travel closer to the Sun. And, we have a high gravity well between Moho and the Sun for cool gravity assists. Maybe place the new planet a little closer to the Sun out of the plane of Moho. And, if we get a new giant outside of Eeloo then do we get a higher timewarp setting?

It would be a cool lightweight early landing gear part good for early career SSTO's. The greatest culprit with early career SSTO's is that the LY-01 and LY-05 overheat to quickly and a heat resistant skid would fill in that gap.

You should ask for craft here... https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/forum/21-the-spacecraft-exchange/ This is to ask for game play help. While your here can't you just ask how to build one yourself, it's most peoples intent of building besides piloting. With me it's more building In general it's a matter of scaling things up using the biggest tanks and using auto struts.

@TiTaNiUmCrYstAL According to Stratzenblitz it loads terrain in blocks/chunks so one heading traveled over a course at specific acceleration/deceleration over a course of time proves better. IIRC I've seen a stratzenblitz youtube comment where he stated he attempted many tries to find a proper successful heading. Firing Sepatrons to lower framerate to 10 (less or more depending on your own computer and entire vessel) has an effect to achieve quicker decceleration over the same time to escape the terrain colliders. If you've found a heading to achieve ~2000m/s it doesn't mean the terrain chunks loaded during the deceleration process are in proper alignment as they were to do your acceleration run. So you need to find a heading that loads the terrain chunks over the full acel/deceleration course. That could be any heading and by all means you have to find a new one to do the job. Then you have the entire vessel itself. You should have some means to push the vessel down using any elevon and have enough sepatrons to decelerate and to lower framerate. By all means your vessel should look more or less similar to that of stratzenblitz unless you've come up with your own unique creativity. Got any pictures?

Hmm. I always used EER so I didn't know, but now I do, thanks

I know you play no mods... just to clarify. These people (including me) use... In a nutshell: It gives you all the free editing room stock editor doesn't give to you Some parts are attached onto a node within a stack. A node (attachment node) is the green ball you see when trying to connect a piece to it. If it snaps it is snapped to that node. When something of 1.25m to 1.25m is attached to that node you have a sleak aerodynamic fuselage. Always try to connect 1.25 to 1.25 and use 1.25 to 2.5m adapters to make things look and function as sleak. Other parts however are "surface attachable" like some specific engines or science parts (among things). Usually these have little drag associated with them but are also best to attach to the green nodes to satisfy the best aerodynamic situation possible as that is often better. I would consider myself very expert in addressing this point since I experimented with it quite often and have a lot to say for it. The bottom line that the rules in this are nonsensically arbitrary, so it's disgustingly pathetic how this works out exactly and I have no short explanation out of the sleeve to hand over to you. First of all it's best to use "autostruts' This is a function when you right click on a part followed by a context menu where it says autostrut with 3 options (heaviest, root and grandparent) This option is only visible when enabling "advanced tweakables" in the main menu general settings (have to revert to main menu and have the "strut" part unlocked in the tech tree when playing career) Autostrut rules in a nutshell: If you have a central stack (like a 2.5m rocket with several tanks, cockpit, and other modules within) then it is best to use only "grandparent part" Especially when the vessel is long it is often useful to autostrut the far end (the engines) to root (assuming root is the cockpit above) to stiffen the rigidity over the full length. If you have parallel tanks to the sides then it is best to use "Grandparent autostrut" only on the parallel part (fuel tank) that is directly attached to the central stack but the other fuel tanks attached to the parallel stacks are better attached to root or heaviest to weld the parallel rigidity to the core stack. Otherwise you grandparent the parallel tanks to the same fuel tanks on the parallel stack while it's better to strut it to the central stack which is stiffened through grandparent struts with which they're attached to. Alternatively you can use the part strut but they have added weight and minor aerodynamic drag so try to avoid them. I usually only use them in odd situations where heaviest or root part are in off locations, or I use the strut part for looks as it may sometimes serve the aesthetic purposes. Now, to address all the bits and pieces considering the above quote... Landing gear and rover wheels need to be straight. You can use number keys (1,2,3 and 4) to switch between Place, move, rotate and select root. You can use "3" (rotate) to put landing gear on a angle for better rolling stability. But this also means they will break faster when hitting terrain. The further any part (fuel tank or wing) is moved away from the parent part the less rigid it becomes. It may make it wiggle but it won't break off mostly. Under flight such parts are under aerodynamic stress and (rigid attachment will make connections brittle and break so don't use it) Unfortunately with wings you want to add other sections to that wing but when you add more attachment points on the Width of a craft (by adding wing segments to other wing segments) the furthest attachment point becomes more flexing and brittle. Eventually there's a point where you autostrut them, fly your vessel under the best piloting skill and by the time you reach 400m/s they start to fall of. Does this mean you can't make massively large wings? Fortunately you can. What you want to do is place each individual wing part to the fuselage itself. That means you want your wing tip to be attached to the central fuel tank just as the first wing segment is which is directly attached to it. The culprit is that you have to move:tool each wing segment to the corresponding spot and that you have to individually move each part away from one another. With the editor extension mod posted above you should have the freedom to move parts anywhere even outside the space plane hangar lol Through this method of attaching wings I created the biggest rapier cargo SSTO there is (not the biggest but the most cargo capacity AFAIK) excuse me for undeserved boasting rights. If you want to magnify yourself into that design and how I made that SSTO then you can download it at my KerbalX. As you'll see each wing segment is placed seperately. https://kerbalx.com/Aeroboi/Hearts-Chevron-96-Cargo-Lifter-2375MC You also want to make sure wing segments barely touch one another as they might clip into one another at high speed and break. Best is to move them from one another until they barely touch one another. Attaching parts to specific other parts may prove better then attaching them to specific other parts. You can use the same SSTO again as I used the following trick for that design also. If you mouse point over the central main landing gear there are 2 "Extra Large landing gear" on that space plane. One of them is attached to the central fuel tank and the Engine block is attached to that main landing gear. You would have to use "absolute mode" (Press F) and use rotate (3) with (5-90° rotating increments, toggle using C) to rotate the engine block into linear relation to the fuselage. The apparent benefit of attaching super heavy stuff to landing gear is that landing gear parts are extremely rigid. (every landing gear with the heavy landing gear being the strongest) The further a part is from it's connection point the more wiggly it becomes. Landing gear doesn't wiggle and is shut stuck into position even if you drag it to the outside of your vessel. This is probably to accommodate rolling balance so wheels don't drift or shift out of balance because of silly wheel physics. Many people are aware that you can use hyperedit and drop a super heavy vessel using the "Heaviest landing gear" from 200meters high and hit the surface at 50m/s or more and survive. And well, that's the deal with these landing gear. They don't bend, wiggle, vibrate or even break. So if you need something very heavy on one end (or both ends) of your vessel it's best to use the largest landing gear, drag it to the sides and remove lower/retract from the landing gear action group (unless it serves as landing gear as in my SSTO) and then attach the heavy module to it's surface and use rotation to snap it horizontal/vertical. The added benefit is that it is nearly impossible for it to break off. I tested this and it is the best method to have very heavy stuff hanging off from one side, the other benefit is that landing gears are very aerodynamic so they have no penalty to be used as such a rigid attachment surface and you can attach Kilotons to a Extra Large landing gear and it will serve it's purpose under what I consider ludicrous designs. Furthermore it is best to use the widest fuel tanks as possible. If the main stack is 2.5m try to stay at 2.5m and not shrink to 1.25m. If you have a 1.25m central stack with very much stuff hanging onto it and it has to endure aerodynamic stress then it is best to use a wider setup. If a part is rotated from another part (like in a ring station) the connection is just as rigid. But a rotation from one piece to another piece creates a spring effect while the snap off rigidity remains the same. So theoretically a rotated part under stress while it might be due to momentum (thrust) or impact should snap off sooner compared to not being rotated. AFAIK I have never snapped off a rotated part due to aerodynamics or impact so beyond theory you shouldn't worry. Just try not to attach something extremely heavy to a rotated part just to be safe, otherwise test it yourself and let us know 1: Angles: For Vacuum spacecraft rotated misalignment usually doesn't matter. KSP calculates drag on the attachment setup. If 1.25m is attached to 1.25m it has no added drag. When you rotate them from one another they would increase drag because doing so creates a dent into a cylindrical shape and it increases the frontal cross section. On a jet engine SSTO this will be a problem as it may add to much drag to break the sound barrier. 2: Thrust lines: The same balance has to be met in terms of Thrust balance. You can use the "Center of Thrust" Purple icon to see how thrust moves through the CoM. If this thrust arrow moves below the CoM thrust will make the plane pitch up. So try to make the vessel so that the thrust arrow goes right through the yellow CoM marker. If you rotate engines to create something like a spaceshuttle replica you will have to pay special attention to this. The SSTO I posted above is a good example whereby the Center of Thrust is a problem whereby I created a proper workaround by being able to toggle on/off engines modes so I can control pitch in the upper atmosphere and in space. 3: lifting surfaces It has been mentioned before but you can rotate wings for desired lift effect called wing incidence. Imagine a airplane flying level at 0° pitch with 0° horizontal wings relative to the fuselage. What would the airplane do? It would sink... Take any airliner on a picture album and see that most airplanes have their wing on a incline (That means the wing is rotated several ° above horizontal) In that scenario a airplane would stay level at 0° (at least at a certain speed: "cruising speed?") This is so the wing has positive lift at operating speeds so that the fuselage is straight into the wind. If you don't put this incline (wing incidence) on the airplane the plane has to pitch to create the desired lift but the fuselage will also rise above the prograde reticle and suffer more drag whereby it enlarges the frontal cross section. AFAIK most SSTO professional users make use of wing incidence. The only problem with wing incidence is that it creates a pitching moment based on the inclination of the wing. A inclined wing in front of the CoM will want to rise the nose. So what you do is rotate a incline on the front or rear stabilizers to re-balance this effect. Best is to design that the Center of Mass in Wet mode (fueled mass) is similar to the Dry mode (empty fueled) and you can use the RCSbuildAid mod to see dry/wet mass indicators using the CoM icon on the vessel. It is best to balance this effect by rotating front/rear stabilizers to mitigate this effect. Otherwise the Elevon to correct that effect has to pitch and it will add drag. Keep playing with incline until the plane flies more or less level without control input or SAS and you will have little no no control surface drag. Another point about lifting surfaces is that for the best "roll" effect elevons directly to the larboard/starboard sides in relation to the CoM across the vessel length will cause greater rolling torque. So if Elevons on the rear are set to roll (away from the CoM) the effect is lessened. The closer the Center of Lift is to the Center of Thrust the less torque is required to roll, pitch or yaw the vessel. Sometimes however the front has more drag then the rear causing a plane to flip when achieving a certain airspeed if the CoL is to close to the CoM, so it is often better to place it somewhat behind the CoM unless you know what your doing and you want a very agile plane. There are also wing attachment methods called dihedral and anhedral. Dihedral is that the wings are rotated so that the tips point slightly upward. This creates a keeling/swing effect like on a marine ship and acts as a horizontal roll stabilizer whereby it's effect causes the plane to roll natively to 0° bank for level flight. The swing effect is that the Center of Lift will be above the Center of Mass making the mass of the vessel swing below the Center of Lift which is why it wants to natively level out when using this trick. The keeling effect creates native vertical stabilizing effect also. Anhedral is the opposite whereby wings are rotated with the tips to the ground. Here the CoL is below the CoM. The benefit is very fast and immediate roll input. So for agility a small level of Anhedral wing design can be beneficial. It also creates the Keeling effect as with Dihedral. To see where you could attach to? I know it seems straightforward but sometimes I create very tight adapters using cubic octagonal struts or attach a 1.875m engine plate to a 3.75m engine plate. Then the nodes are packed together and I want to see what I'm attaching to what node as I sometimes miss click. Usually I hold LEFT ALT (Right Shift on Unix) when attaching to a node if a part is both node/surface attachable to make sure it attached to the node and not to the surface. Sometimes I have a cargo bay full with stuff with many nodes and I want a specific part attached at a specific node and it is best to see where the attachment point is. Sometimes that attachment node is clipped inside a fuel tank. With the green/black node ball I can still see the node of the part while it is clipped. Otherwise I would have to drag the part out to see where I attached it to. Sometimes they use 10 mods on a single plane or rocket. It would be quite cumbersome to list all mods used unless people want to specifically share it. Can you blame them? Ultimately it is your intention to play the game in thorough respect and will have to creativity to find out all the mods used in this game. Personally I spend 2 days myself browsing the addon release page to learn about all the available mods out there. I suggest you do the same. Many of the threads are very informative about the mod usage and content. Also, many people on here use many "gamedata" folders and have "Gamedata" backup folders. Some are for a specific modlist, other's are barely modded some have stock only (occasionally with visual mods) So I have a stock KSP folder and one using many popular mods and 3 others also of which one has RSS installed. Remember you can copy/paste the entire KSP directory to another folder to have multiple KSP copies.

@Actually_New_KSP_Player It might have something to do with Custom asteroids. I know that mod organizes several asteroid types where the heaviest are metallic. So class A or class E could be a asteroid that is metallic based and should be heavier. I haven't played the mod so I'm amazed that it divides asteroids into these classes of different material basis. There's also a mod that I can't find in your list (unless it's part of custom asteroids) that re-configures the asteroids to have realistic weight. The weight of stock asteroids isn't realistic, in real life they're much heavier. In stock it's like they're modules like a rocky shell with a room of air in it. A real life rocket is a Carbon/metal/aluminum shell with liquid propellant in it. Liquid propellant is less heavy then, rock or metal. A small rock compared to the rocket could be the same weight as the spacecraft. A actual asteroid that is the same size (or larger) is usually much heavier then the rocket trying to push it. In stock KSP the rocket is sometimes larger then the asteroid itself while being heavier. That is pathetic by the way but it's the Dev's choice in ease of gameplay and with that I have to agree

Well, tbh if you used a 2.5m rocket with a conical end 2.5 to 1.25m adapter then a single vector producing 1000Kn of thrust would look more or less right. Such a rocket will also be most aerodynamic. Usually there's a plumbing system or pressure system to feed the engine. If presuming something like that consists inside a fuel tank or engine it would require some plumbing or pressure tank to feed the engines quikly enough. One Mammoth is 3.75m while 4 Vectors on a 4 way adapter attached to a 2.5m tank has the same thrust with much more Gimbal I must add. That seems way to strange and could be done differently. That means a 2.5m rocket can plumb fuel to 4 Vectors faster then a 3.75m rocket can plumb fuel to a single Mammoth. It seems rare to me. I think we should have something like @Snark his "Viktor" engine for a properly balanced swap. Then added to that have a 1.875m engine with the same stats as the current Vector engine with shrouds to acommodate 1.25m attachment nodes but with the drag of a 1.875m part. IIRC the native drag of a Vector engine is very low so it should be a minor drag penalty.

Experimenting with Stock subs with the intention to create the fastest Jet sub. 1. Did Submarine test for Hydrodynamics and lightweight, this is a lightweight version. Here is a very fast version (226 kp/h)

Update! Best solution for hydrodynamics. 1. Diverterless supersonic intake. So I did a few tests and I've come to the conclusion that the "Diverterless supersonic intake" is the best solution when using underwater intakes. It doesn't say "diver" terless for no reason... This is weird because these tubes have these air scoops sticking out which would increase resistance in water one would presume. Maybe the scoops are scales like on a actual sea animal, who knows... It seems the Pre-cooler and engine nacelle do slightly worse. The other added benefit is that the Diverterless has the most air intake at low speed, and as we all know, subs are slower so it's the best choice to get the most intake air underwater of all the available intakes. AFAIK you need one per jet engine but you need forward speed for the intakes to function properly so the Sub shouldn't sink to fast at negative velocity to potentiate the effect of a air intake underwater. 2. SM-25 Service module. So what about the rest of the vessel? I wanted to find the most hydrodynamic way to propel underwater for the fastest speed. The most Hydrodynamic way of doing things known and ducumented is to just stack the large ore tank and make the front and aft pointy using engine plates, adapters and proper nosecones. Having tested I could never go much faster then ~50m/s underwater. The large ore tanks have these curves around them and by the looks of it isn't the most dynamic shape of what might be possible, then again, what else is there to sink that is 1.25m or 2.5m wide apart from the other ore tanks and vector engines? Well, nothing really. However, I tested the submergeability of several parts and found out that the SM-25 Service module (which is buoyant) doesn't require that much added weight in order to submerge. What's best about this Making history part is that everything within the shroud is protected from drag. The other benefit is that it seems to be much more Hydrodynamic when submerged then stacking the large ore tanks together. In fact, it is noticeably better. 1. Result (60.6m/s, I did 62.7m/s on the same design with proper balance but forget to screenshot it) That's upwards of 225Kph underwater (which is fast) 2. Another view. What Ore container is best? I did a few tests to see what Ore container is best, do they all sink similarly fast? Absolutely not and there's a clear winner. I created this test bed and staged all 3 ore containers filled using seperators at 0 decoupling force for fair comparison... Result = Several seconds later... In other words it is the "Radial holding tank" that sinks fastest" and has nothing to do with it's hydrodynamic effect since it sinks fastest from ~0m/s up to 18m/s until hitting the ocean floor. Now, if you were to wonder how does the test Sub above sinks? Well, it has the radial holding tanks inside the shroud. Because the radial holding tank sinks fastest relative to it's mass it means the Sub can be much more lightweight then usual. While weight in and of itself doesn't matter in terms of speed much it does mean you have more fuel to ore mass ratio so you could make subs that could travel faster as you would have more fuel compared to ore mass when using the radial holding tank instead. IMPORTANT thing i've learned. The last added benefit is that you can easily move:tool the radial holding tank inside of the SM-25 service bay so you can freely re-arrange the ore mass over the fwt<>aft of the vessel throwing out many design optimizations to get the heavier then water mass (ore) into the correct position for stability. Lightweight/compact Sub design... Using the small holding tank you can create smaller and more lightweight sub designs. You can clip them inside the 1.25m service bay which is a compact design. Unfortunately the 1.25m service bay seems to induce drag underwater more so then other parts such as ore tanks etc so it isn't as fast (still fast)

I always prioritize part count. Why? Because sometimes vessels meet in orbit, so I want to dock a 200 part craft to another 250 part craft and that is very laggy. So I try to build with as little parts as possible. When prioritizing for part count you are prioritizing for weight reduction in a way because you are also often scrapping off those extra Kg's doing so. Mostly you only need the minimalistic. See @Stratzenblitz75 Jool 5 mission to see what minimalistic is. Does he use few parts, is his lifter lightweight, yes! It is a minimalistic fueled design and only the needed requirements are on board. Sure you can build a SSTO to launch 100 Kerbals on a Jool 5. But why? In career mode you usually only need 4 Kerbalnauts for career missions. So a Mk2 space plane with mk2 nose cockpit and inline cockpit could serve the career contracts for science gathering. You only need a small on board orbiter, maybe a setup of 2 rocket modules that can dock and function as a Tylo lander, science equipment and a ISRU if you want to SSTA. Why would you need to bring more stuff? If contracts specify it, like creating a liquid fuel space station around Laythe or Jool or something like that. But then you are prioritizing towards that contract, and it's the contract that decides how big of a rocket is required to pull of the job. If you want to go bigger you are intending to launch big sized cargo for unecessary large orbital stations. There's no reason to do so other then it being cool. I have a save with a large 10kiloton space station in Kerbin Orbit. I have a Minmus mining station with a large fuel truck that aerobrakes at Kerbin to refuel the spacestation. Admittedly I never made use of it because it is faster game play wise to launch another rocket off of Kerbin.

Excluding Wolfhound seems a perspective of realism rather then gameplay. Does it really matter? It's OP but not that much after the Buff and considering their weight it doesn't always deliver that much more Dv unless you have a lot of fuel tank to go with it. That means they're better suited for interplanetary burns. But the LV-N is so much better, so if someone wants to be stupid and use a Wolfhound to tug or for a upper stage then it's not like your miles ahead of any other design that in itself might be better all around IMO.

So that's a SSTO from Kerbin to Moho and then to Eeloo? Tricky... Are ION's okay? I'd say the burn times would be to long. Sometimes I combine them with LV'N. Most Dv expenditure is done between Kerbin, Eve and Moho so you could get away with very few solar panels and pack a punch. I bet nobody is going to build entire ION ships just to score highest, but even if they do it's a achievement nonetheless so maybe you could categorize a ION leaderboard.

It's food for thought, people might further comment... It's up to you

I wanted to experiment with building subs recently and I know many people like them. I tried to play with part buoyancies and found a out 2 neat little tricks using the Vector engines and Inflatable airlock (Making history). Vector Engine Let's explain... 1. I used vessel mover to locate a Mk1 inline cockpit with 2 Vectors attached fwt and aft (shrouded) with gimbal and thrust put to 0. 2. I dropped the vessel. Watch the mission timer to see it had settled several seconds... 3. In the next picture I staged the Vector engines, and see what happens... 4. Since I created ballast the vessel starts to sink, eventually at a great increasing speed... so 3 seconds later! Conclusion: In other words, staging Vectors (who would sink by themselves when not staged) you add extra ballast. Unfortunately the process can't be reversed by the looks of it. When staged they have added ballast but if you were to shutdown they do not revert and the extra ballast is permanent. That means ISRU vessels would have to much ballast if they were to refill. Although I haven't tried if you could re-dock vectors to the sub and re-stage them would be a workaround, maybe someone else will see before I do. This trick is a very good thing since using jet engines underwater you will loose fuel mass and the ship becomes more buoyant. While vectors would sink by themselves anyhow you could add them to adapters or on the sides. The vector shrouds look submarine like anyhow, are very aero/hydrodynamic and you could stage them in sequence to add ballast as you burn off fuel. Of course you'll have to place them so that they re-balance evenly. There are other ways to alternate buoyancies by close/opening cargo bays. If a cargo bay content is buoyant it will be calculated when the cargo bays are open while open cargo bays themselves are more buoyant when open. You'd think they'd fill with water and would therefore sink, silly developers lol. Using vectors would be better weight wise since they'd sink by themselves anyhow and using cargo bays you need more weight to submerge so the overal weight of your sub will be higher (that's less speed and less fuel economy) Inflatable airlock Again I have a Mk1 cockpit with 2 Vectors but 2 on one end with 3 inflatable airlocks at the top. 1. Again I start off with the Vectors un-staged and the Vessel nearly doesn't sink due to the closed airlocks being (slightly) buoyant. 2. I staged the Vectors, several seconds later... 3. I opened all 3 airlocks (requires just only 1 to be slighly buoyant, 3 is more impressive) 4. Several seconds later. The neat trick is that you can use a vector only Submarine and stage them to add increased ballast. On the other hand you can toggle airlocks to increase/decrease ballast. A staged Vector may not be as heavy in water as a Ore tank Mass to Mass but you can clip, stack and form factor to 1.25m only for potentially faster more aerodynamic submarines. Because the effect of a airlock mass to mass and per magnitude of effect using a single airlock you could combine the effect of both to fine tune ballast. If your intention is to use the airlock fine tuning could be easier if the mass of the Sub is heavier. Try to distribute them evenly for balance. Put the airlocks on action groups to tune the effect as you burn of fuel. You may be able to stuff a cargo bay with ore/vector ballast and put the airlocks inside to decrease drag for faster speeds and have free ballast control. Happy diving

300 kicks? Just so you can win 50m/s to win, lame... I'd call someone out when he does that. That's 300 pictures of Kerbin or a 30 second 10x timelapse haha... As you say price would be the way to go in order to challenge this IMO, although it does not always force mass optimization. No gravity assists, periapsis kicks plus no xenon or LV-N seems to restrict the challenge to design only. Is that a good thing or the challenge we all want? (me=no) While restricting the challenge that way is simple and straightforward it will make the challenge very uniform, and boring. The point in winning it (if that's your drive regardless) is that you could master gravity assists and orbital maneuvers sufficiently because therein lies the challenge to win the race. I would allow LV-N over the Moho <> Tylo course. You would want some ISP oomph to traverse and win the distance, the proper planetary alignment and gravity assists will make one a winner. And let's not forget, it's a problem to lift a LV-N of off Eve so if you can do it and it pays off then let's allow one to use the LV-N if he wishes to. If it is a race it should be a race. So while the Eve lifter would be the hardest to design it's the final stage and the piloting skill of the user to determine if he will win that race. The Eve lifter part will just be the greater design element to lift your racer into space, the racer is just as important as the lifter. To restrict your race rocket to have nothing other then convential LF/O powerplant seems to limit the racing objective of this challenge. But maybe that is what we actually want, the race element thrown out of it. Periapsis kicking using xenon is grinding and ultimately stupid, and if you allow xenon to be used people will try to squeeze out the last few Kg's of xenon weight to have the greatest edge and that would certainly make them a winner even if their Eve lifter was crappy to begin with. Through that method you can win on Xenon all day long without using gravity assists. If you allow everything you should make subcategories.

Beyond that it has this ridiculous gimbal effect along with it making it OP in more then one area. What amazes me is that these Vector engines were introduced as replica parts for the spaceshuttle main engines. But that makes no sense because the Mk3 modules to create a stock a like space shuttle does not require 3 Vector engines as that would be to overpowered, and IIRC (IIRC = stating the obvious) the space shuttle had 3 of them and using 2 of them with traditional SRB's and you are already over thrusted. So Vectors as SSME's seems hardly a resembling balance if you ask me. For balance purposes I would shrink or re-specify the Vector engine to be balanced and have a unique engine for atmospheric purposes, linear aerospikes or vaccuum optimized nozzles. The worst part about Vectors is that they produce little to no drag. So when you surface attach them you don't have to add cones on top of them. IME it makes no difference and terminal velocity is more or less the same. That means you can stack them at the underside of a Mammoth engine. If you drag them tight enough you can add 5 Vectors to the underside of a Mammoth engine without them clipping into one another creating a 9000Kn effective 3.75m engine. That's another complaint, their ease of attachment while already boasting those other top notch specifications. Of course the trade off is it's cost, but I never play career, so I don't care. And it's not about cost but about gameplay and balance. If a digitized budget number is going to give value then it will have little consequence outside of career mode. And scrapping the cost element it is just a ridiculous engine that seems like it's made out of a artificial alloy. I wouldn't want the Vectors benefits to be lost, we need a overpowered exotic or otherwise high thrust and/or vacuum optimized engines for the planetary bodies where one may require them. I'm also not suggesting to mend or replace the vector, I have no issue to have it remained because OP things are never really that much of a pest. But in retrospect and serious analysis it's a bit wacky why the vector is so OP and I'm sure many will agree.

Great for high thrust rockets. (Some SSTO rockets of mine have 4 TWR, heat resistance and aerodynamics to break orbital velocity @25km altitude) This is especially handy for SSTO rockets as it lessens Dv requirement. You want as much thrust on such vessels as bottom attachment nodes allow, the vector will be the obvious choice. Vectors have the greatest thrust per cross section. The cross section is the frontal surface area of the vessel which is 1.25m. A vector has 1000Kn per 1.25m so it's thrust is very overpowered. And while its thrust to cross section is overpowered it also has a good atmospheric/vacuum ISP range making it good for Eve lifters + they are very aerodynamic so you can surface attach them without using a nosecone and they wont cause any/much drag. Good for submarine ballast as mentioned. Good for rocket powered VTOL engines like on oxygen less bodies. Because their gimbal is superb you can use them to rotate even if the CoM shifts (try to minize that anyway)

@TimberWolffe For weight reduction I can put the Kerbals in a fairing shell inside a seat. Can I do this? Or does it need to be a capsule. If properly places the Kerbals will get out of the fairing. Or is that a exploit?